To be leaders of society in the town of Dulham was as satisfactory to
Miss Dobin and Miss Lucinda Dobin as if Dulham were London itself. Of
late years, though they would not allow themselves to suspect such
treason, the most ill-bred of the younger people in the village made fun
of them behind their backs, and laughed at their treasured summer
mantillas, their mincing steps, and the shape of their parasols.
They were always conscious of the fact that they were the daughters of a
once eminent Dulham minister; but beside this unanswerable claim to the
respect of the First Parish, they were aware that their mother’s social
position was one of superior altitude. Madam Dobin’s grandmother was a
Greenaple of Boston. In her younger days she had often visited her
relatives, the Greenaples and Hightrees, and in seasons of festivity she
could relate to a select and properly excited audience her delightful
experiences of town life. Nothing could be finer than her account of
having taken tea at Governor Clovenfoot’s, on Beacon Street, in company
with an English lord, who was indulging himself in a brief vacation from
his arduous duties at the Court of St. James.
“He exclaimed that he had seldom seen in England so beautiful and
intelligent a company of ladies,” Madam Dobin would always say in
conclusion. “He was decorated with the blue ribbon of the Knights of the
Garter.” Miss Dobin and Miss Lucinda thought for many years that this
famous blue ribbon was tied about the noble gentleman’s leg. One day
they even discussed the question openly; Miss Dobin placing the
decoration at his knee, and Miss Lucinda locating it much lower down,
according to the length of the short gray socks with which she was
familiar.
“You have no imagination, Lucinda,” the elder sister replied
impatiently. “Of course, those were the days of small-clothes and long
silk stockings!”—whereat Miss Lucinda was rebuked, but not persuaded.
“I wish that my dear girls could have the outlook upon society which
fell to my portion,” Madam Dobin sighed, after she had set these
ignorant minds to rights, and enriched them by communicating the final
truth about the blue ribbon. “I must not chide you for the absence of
opportunities, but if our cousin Harriet Greenaple were only living, you
would not lack enjoyment or social education.”
Madam Dobin had now been dead a great many years. She seemed an elderly
woman to her daughters some time before she left them; they thought
later that she had really died comparatively young, since their own
years had come to equal the record of hers. When they visited her tall
white tombstone in the orderly Dulham burying-ground, it was a strange
thought to both the daughters that they were older women than their
mother had been when she died. To be sure, it was the fashion to appear
older in her day,—they could remember the sober effect of really
youthful married persons in cap and frisette; but, whether they owed it
to the changed times or to their own qualities, they felt no older
themselves than ever they had. Beside upholding the ministerial dignity
of their father, they were obliged to give a lenient sanction to the
ways of the world for their mother’s sake; and they combined the two
duties with reverence and impartiality.
Madam Dobin was, in her prime, a walking example of refinement and
courtesy. If she erred in any way, it was by keeping too strict watch
and rule over her small kingdom. She acted with great dignity in all
matters of social administration and etiquette, but, while it must be
owned that the parishioners felt a sense of freedom for a time after her
death, in their later years they praised and valued her more and more,
and often lamented her generously and sincerely.
Several of her distinguished relatives attended Madam Dobin’s funeral,
which was long considered the most dignified and elegant pageant of that
sort which had ever taken place in Dulham. It seemed to mark the close
of a famous epoch in Dulham history, and it was increasingly difficult
forever afterward to keep the tone of society up to the old standard.
Somehow, the distinguished relatives had one by one disappeared, though
they all had excellent reasons for the discontinuance of their visits. A
few had left this world altogether, and the family circle of the
Greenaples and Hightrees was greatly reduced in circumference.
Sometimes, in summer, a stray connection drifted Dulham-ward, and was
displayed to the townspeople (not to say paraded) by the gratified
hostesses. It was a disappointment if the guest could not be persuaded
to remain over Sunday and appear at church. When household antiquities
became fashionable, the ladies remarked upon a surprising interest in
their corner cupboard and best chairs, and some distant relatives
revived their almost forgotten custom of paying a summer visit to
Dulham. They were not long in finding out with what desperate affection
Miss Dobin and Miss Lucinda clung to their mother’s wedding china and
other inheritances, and were allowed to depart without a single teacup.
One graceless descendant of the Hightrees prowled from garret to cellar,
and admired the household belongings diligently, but she was not asked
to accept even the dislocated cherry-wood footstool that she had
discovered in the far corner of the parsonage pew.
Some of the Dulham friends had always suspected that Madam Dobin made a
social misstep when she chose the Reverend Edward Dobin for her husband.
She was no longer young when she married, and though she had gone
through the wood and picked up a crooked stick at last, it made a great
difference that her stick possessed an ecclesiastical bark. The Reverend
Edward was, moreover, a respectable graduate of Harvard College, and to
a woman of her standards a clergyman was by no means insignificant. It
was impossible not to respect his office, at any rate, and she must have
treated him with proper veneration for the sake of that, if for no other
reason, though his early advantages had been insufficient, and he was
quite insensible to the claims of the Greenaple pedigree, and preferred
an Indian pudding to pie crust that was, without exaggeration, half a
quarter high. The delicacy of Madam Dobin’s touch and preference in
everything, from hymns to cookery, was quite lost upon this respected
preacher, yet he was not without pride or complete confidence in his own
decisions.
The Reverend Mr. Dobin was never very enlightening in his discourses,
and was providentially stopped short by a stroke of paralysis in the
middle of his clerical career. He lived on and on through many dreary
years, but his children never accepted the fact that he was a tyrant,
and served him humbly and patiently. He fell at last into a condition of
great incapacity and chronic trembling, but was able for nearly a
quarter of a century to be carried to the meeting-house from time to
time to pronounce farewell discourses. On high days of the church he was
always placed in the pulpit, and held up his shaking hands when the
benediction was pronounced, as if the divine gift were exclusively his
own, and the other minister did but say empty words. Afterward he was
usually tired and displeased and hard to cope with, but there was always
a proper notice taken of these too often recurring events. For old
times’ and for pity’s sake and from natural goodness of heart, the elder
parishioners rallied manfully about the Reverend Mr. Dobin; and whoever
his successor or colleague might be, the Dobins were always called the
minister’s folks, while the active laborer in that vineyard was only Mr.
Smith or Mr. Jones, as the case might be. At last the poor old man died,
to everybody’s relief and astonishment; and after he was properly
preached about and lamented, his daughters, Miss Dobin and Miss Lucinda,
took a good look at life from a new standpoint, and decided that, now
they were no longer constrained by home duties, they must make
themselves of a great deal more use to the town.
Sometimes there is such a household as this (which has been perhaps too
minutely described), where the parents linger until their children are
far past middle age, and always keep them in a too childish and unworthy
state of subjection. The Misses Dobin’s characters were much influenced
by such an unnatural prolongation of the filial relationship, and they
were amazingly slow to suspect that they were not so young as they used
to be. There was nothing to measure themselves by but Dulham people and
things. The elm-trees were growing yet, and many of the ladies of the
First Parish were older than they, and called them, with pleasant
familiarity, the Dobin girls. These elderly persons seemed really to be
growing old, and Miss Lucinda frequently lamented the change in society;
she thought it a freak of nature and too sudden blighting of earthly
hopes that several charming old friends of her mother’s were no longer
living. They were advanced in age when Miss Lucinda was a young girl,
though time and space are but relative, after all.
Their influence upon society would have made a great difference in many
ways. Certainly, the new parishioners, who had often enough been
instructed to pronounce their pastor’s name as if it were spelled with
one “b,” would not have boldly returned again and again to their
obnoxious habit of saying Dobbin. Miss Lucinda might carefully speak to
the neighbor and new-comers of “my sister, Miss Do-bin;” only the select
company of intimates followed her lead, and at last there was something
humiliating about it, even though many persons spoke of them only as
“the ladies.”
“The name was originally _D’Aubigne_, we think,” Miss Lucinda would say
coldly and patiently, as if she had already explained this foolish
mistake a thousand times too often. It was like the sorrows in many a
provincial château in the Reign of Terror. The ladies looked on with
increasing dismay at the retrogression in society. They felt as if they
were a feeble garrison, to whose lot it had fallen to repulse a noisy,
irreverent mob, an increasing band of marauders who would overthrow all
landmarks of the past, all etiquette and social rank. The new minister
himself was a round-faced, unspiritual-looking young man, whom they
would have instinctively ignored if he had not been a minister. The new
people who came to Dulham were not like the older residents, and they
had no desire to be taught better. Little they cared about the
Greenaples or the Hightrees; and once, when Miss Dobin essayed to speak
of some detail of her mother’s brilliant experiences in Boston high
life, she was interrupted, and the new-comer who sat next her at the
parish sewing society began to talk about something else. We cannot
believe that it could have been the tea-party at Governor Clovenfoot’s
which the rude creature so disrespectfully ignored, but some persons are
capable of showing any lack of good taste.
The ladies had an unusual and most painful sense of failure, as they
went home together that evening. “I have always made it my object to
improve and interest the people at such times; it would seem so possible
to elevate their thoughts and direct them into higher channels,” said
Miss Dobin sadly. “But as for that Woolden woman, there is no use in
casting pearls before swine!”
Miss Lucinda murmured an indignant assent. She had a secret suspicion
that the Woolden woman had heard the story in question oftener than had
pleased her. She was but an ignorant creature; though she had lived in
Dulham twelve or thirteen years, she was no better than when she came.
The mistake was in treating sister Harriet as if she were on a level
with the rest of the company. Miss Lucinda had observed more than once,
lately, that her sister sometimes repeated herself, unconsciously, a
little oftener than was agreeable. Perhaps they were getting a trifle
dull; towards spring it might be well to pass a few days with some of
their friends, and have a change.
“If I have tried to do anything,” said Miss Dobin in an icy tone, “it
has been to stand firm in my lot and place, and to hold the standard of
cultivated mind and elegant manners as high as possible. You would think
it had been a hundred years since our mother’s death, so completely has
the effect of her good breeding and exquisite hospitality been lost
sight of, here in Dulham. I could wish that our father had chosen to
settle in a larger and more appreciative place. They would like to put
us on the shelf, too. I can see that plainly.”
“I am sure we have our friends,” said Miss Lucinda anxiously, but with a
choking voice. “We must not let them think we do not mean to keep up
with the times, as we always have. I do feel as if perhaps—our hair”—
And the sad secret was out at last. Each of the sisters drew a long
breath of relief at this beginning of a confession.
It was certain that they must take some steps to retrieve their lost
ascendency. Public attention had that evening been called to their
fast-disappearing locks, poor ladies; and Miss Lucinda felt the
discomfort most, for she had been the inheritor of the Hightree hair,
long and curly, and chestnut in color. There used to be a waviness about
it, and sometimes pretty escaping curls, but these were gone long ago.
Miss Dobin resembled her father, and her hair had not been luxuriant, so
that she was less changed by its absence than one might suppose. The
straightness and thinness had increased so gradually that neither sister
had quite accepted the thought that other persons would particularly
notice their altered appearance.
They had shrunk, with the reticence born of close family association,
from speaking of the cause even to each other, when they made themselves
pretty little lace and dotted muslin caps. Breakfast caps, they called
them, and explained that these were universally worn in town; the young
Princess of Wales originated them, or at any rate adopted them. The
ladies offered no apology for keeping the breakfast caps on until
bedtime, and in spite of them a forward child had just spoken, loud and
shrill, an untimely question in the ears of the for once silent sewing
society. “Do Miss Dobinses wear them great caps because their heads is
cold?” the little beast had said; and everybody was startled and
dismayed.
Miss Dobin had never shown better her good breeding and valor, the
younger sister thought.
“No, little girl,” replied the stately Harriet, with a chilly smile. “I
believe that our headdresses are quite in the fashion for ladies of all
ages. And you must remember that it is never polite to make such
personal remarks.” It was after this that Miss Dobin had been reminded
of Madam Somebody’s unusual headgear at the evening entertainment in
Boston. Nobody but the Woolden woman could have interrupted her under
such trying circumstances.
Miss Lucinda, however, was certain that the time had come for making
some effort to replace her lost adornment. The child had told an
unwelcome truth, but had paved the way for further action, and now was
the time to suggest something that had slowly been taking shape in Miss
Lucinda’s mind. A young grand-nephew of their mother and his bride had
passed a few days with them, two or three summers before, and the
sisters had been quite shocked to find that the pretty young woman wore
a row of frizzes, not originally her own, over her smooth forehead. At
the time, Miss Dobin and Miss Lucinda had spoken severely with each
other of such bad taste, but now it made a great difference that the
wearer of the frizzes was not only a relative by marriage and used to
good society, but also that she came from town, and might be supposed to
know what was proper in the way of toilet.
“I really think, sister, that we had better see about having
some—arrangements, next time we go anywhere,” Miss Dobin said
unexpectedly, with a slight tremble in her voice, just as they reached
their own door. “There seems to be quite a fashion for them nowadays.
For the parish’s sake we ought to recognize”—and Miss Lucinda responded
with instant satisfaction. She did not like to complain, but she had
been troubled with neuralgic pains in her forehead on suddenly meeting
the cold air. The sisters felt a new bond of sympathy in keeping this
secret with and for each other; they took pains to say to several
acquaintances that they were thinking of going to the next large town to
do a few errands for Christmas.
A bright, sunny morning seemed to wish the ladies good fortune. Old
Hetty Downs, their faithful maid-servant and protector, looked after
them in affectionate foreboding. “Dear sakes, what devil’s wiles may be
played on them blessed innocents afore they’re safe home again?” she
murmured, as they vanished round the corner of the street that led to
the railway station.
Miss Dobin and Miss Lucinda paced discreetly side by side down the main
street of Westbury. It was nothing like Boston, of course, but the noise
was slightly confusing, and the passers-by sometimes roughly pushed
against them. Westbury was a consequential manufacturing town, but a
great convenience at times like this. The trifling Christmas gifts for
their old neighbors and Sunday-school scholars were purchased and stowed
away in their neat Fayal basket before the serious commission of the day
was attended to. Here and there, in the shops, disreputable frizzes were
displayed in unblushing effrontery, but no such vulgar shopkeeper
merited the patronage of the Misses Dobin. They pretended not to observe
the unattractive goods, and went their way to a low, one-storied
building on a side street, where an old tradesman lived. He had been
useful to the minister while he still remained upon the earth and had
need of a wig, sandy in hue and increasingly sprinkled with gray, as if
it kept pace with other changes of existence. But old Paley’s shutters
were up, and a bar of rough wood was nailed firmly across the one that
had lost its fastening and would rack its feeble hinges in the wind. Old
Paley had always been polite and bland; they really had looked forward
to a little chat with him; they had heard a year or two before of his
wife’s death, and meant to offer sympathy. His business of hair-dressing
had been carried on with that of parasol and umbrella mending, and the
condemned umbrella which was his sign flapped and swung in the rising
wind, a tattered skeleton before the closed door. The ladies sighed and
turned away; they were beginning to feel tired; the day was long, and
they had not met with any pleasures yet. “We might walk up the street a
little farther,” suggested Miss Lucinda; “that is, if you are not
tired,” as they stood hesitating on the corner after they had finished a
short discussion of Mr. Paley’s disappearance. Happily it was only a few
minutes before they came to a stop together in front of a new, shining
shop, where smirking waxen heads all in a row were decked with the
latest fashions of wigs and frizzes. One smiling fragment of a gentleman
stared so straight at Miss Lucinda with his black eyes that she felt
quite coy and embarrassed, and was obliged to feign not to be conscious
of his admiration. But Miss Dobin, after a brief delay, boldly opened
the door and entered; it was better to be sheltered in the shop than
exposed to public remark as they gazed in at the windows. Miss Lucinda
felt her heart beat and her courage give out; she, coward like, left the
transaction of their business to her sister, and turned to contemplate
the back of the handsome model. It was a slight shock to find that he
was not so attractive from this point of view. The wig he wore was well
made all round, but his shoulders were roughly finished in a substance
that looked like plain plaster of Paris.
“What can I have ze pleasure of showing you, young ladees?” asked a
person who advanced; and Miss Lucinda faced about to discover a smiling,
middle-aged Frenchman, who rubbed his hands together and looked at his
customers, first one and then the other, with delightful deference. He
seemed a very civil nice person, the young ladies thought.
“My sister and I were thinking of buying some little arrangements to
wear above the forehead.” Miss Dobin explained, with pathetic dignity;
but the Frenchman spared her any further words. He looked with eager
interest at the bonnets, as if no lack had attracted his notice before.
“Ah, yes. _Je comprends_; ze high foreheads are not now ze mode. Je
prefer them, moi, yes, yes, but ze ladees must accept ze fashion; zay
must now cover ze forehead with ze frizzes, ze bangs, you say. As you
wis’, as you wis’!” and the tactful little man, with many shrugs and
merry gestures at such girlish fancies, pulled down one box after
another.
It was a great relief to find that this was no worse, to say the least,
than any other shopping, though the solemnity and secrecy of the
occasion were infringed upon by the great supply of “arrangements” and
the loud discussion of the color of some crimps a noisy girl was buying
from a young saleswoman the other side of the shop.
Miss Dobin waved aside the wares which were being displayed for her
approval. “Something—more simple, if you please,”—she did not like to
say “older.”
“But these are _très simple_,” protested the Frenchman. “We have nothing
younger;” and Miss Dobin and Miss Lucinda blushed, and said no more. The
Frenchman had his own way; he persuaded them that nothing was so
suitable as some conspicuous forelocks that matched their hair as it
used to be. They would have given anything rather than leave their
breakfast caps at home, if they had known that their proper winter
bonnets must come off. They hardly listened to the wig merchant’s glib
voice as Miss Dobin stood revealed before the merciless mirror at the
back of the shop.
He made everything as easy as possible, the friendly creature, and the
ladies were grateful to him. Besides, now that the bonnet was on again
there was a great improvement in Miss Dobin’s appearance. She turned to
Miss Lucinda, and saw a gleam of delight in her eager countenance. “It
really is very becoming. I like the way it parts over your forehead,”
said the younger sister, “but if it were long enough to go behind the
ears”—“_Non, non_,” entreated the Frenchman. “To make her the old woman
at once would be cruelty!” And Lucinda, who was wondering how well she
would look in her turn, succumbed promptly to such protestations. Yes,
there was no use in being old before their time. Dulham was not quite
keeping pace with the rest of the world in these days, but they need not
drag behind everybody else, just because they lived there.
The price of the little arrangements was much less than the sisters
expected, and the uncomfortable expense of their reverend father’s wigs
had been, it was proved, a thing of the past. Miss Dobin treated her
polite Frenchman with great courtesy; indeed, Miss Lucinda had more than
once whispered to her to talk French, and as they were bowed out of the
shop the gracious _Bongsure_ of the elder lady seemed to act like the
string of a showerbath, and bring down an awesome torrent of foreign
phrases upon the two guileless heads. It was impossible to reply; the
ladies bowed again, however, and Miss Lucinda caught a last smile from
the handsome wax countenance in the window. He appeared to regard her
with fresh approval, and she departed down the street with mincing
steps.
“I feel as if anybody might look at me now, sister,” said gentle Miss
Lucinda. “I confess, I have really suffered sometimes, since I knew I
looked so distressed.”
“Yours is lighter than I thought it was in the shop,” remarked Miss
Dobin doubtfully, but she quickly added that perhaps it would change a
little. She was so perfectly satisfied with her own appearance that she
could not bear to dim the pleasure of any one else. The truth remained
that she never would have let Lucinda choose that particular arrangement
if she had seen it first in a good light. And Lucinda was thinking
exactly the same of her companion.
“I am sure we shall have no more neuralgia,” said Miss Dobin. “I am
sorry we waited so long, dear,” and they tripped down the main street of
Westbury, confident that nobody would suspect them of being over thirty.
Indeed, they felt quite girlish, and unconsciously looked sideways as
they went along, to see their satisfying reflections in the windows. The
great panes made excellent mirrors, with not too clear or lasting
pictures of these comforted passers-by.
The Frenchman in the shop was making merry with his assistants. The two
great frisettes had long been out of fashion; he had been lying in wait
with them for two unsuspecting country ladies, who could be cajoled into
such a purchase.
“Sister,” Miss Lucinda was saying, “you know there is still an hour to
wait before our train goes. Suppose we take a little longer walk down
the other side of the way;” and they strolled slowly back again. In
fact, they nearly missed the train, naughty girls! Hetty would have been
so worried, they assured each other, but they reached the station just
in time.
“Lutie,” said Miss Dobin, “put up your hand and part it from your
forehead; it seems to be getting a little out of place;” and Miss
Lucinda, who had just got breath enough to speak, returned the
information that Miss Dobin’s was almost covering her eyebrows. They
might have to trim them a little shorter; of course it could be done.
The darkness was falling; they had taken an early dinner before they
started, and now they were tired and hungry after the exertion of the
afternoon, but the spirit of youth flamed afresh in their hearts, and
they were very happy. If one’s heart remains young, it is a sore trial
to have the outward appearance entirely at variance. It was the ladies’
nature to be girlish, and they found it impossible not to be grateful to
the flimsy, ineffectual disguise which seemed to set them right with the
world. The old conductor, who had known them for many years, looked hard
at them as he took their tickets, and, being a man of humor and
compassion, affected not to notice anything remarkable in their
appearance. “You ladies never mean to grow old, like the rest of us,” he
said gallantly, and the sisters fairly quaked with joy. Their young
hearts would forever keep them truly unconscious of the cruel thievery
of time.
“Bless us!” the obnoxious Mrs. Woolden was saying, at the other end of
the car. “There’s the old maid Dobbinses, and they’ve bought ’em some
bangs. I expect they wanted to get thatched in a little before real cold
weather; but don’t they look just like a pair o’ poodle dogs.”
The little ladies descended wearily from the train. Somehow they did not
enjoy a day’s shopping as much as they used. They were certainly much
obliged to Hetty for sending her niece’s boy to meet them, with a
lantern; also for having a good warm supper ready when they came in.
Hetty took a quick look at her mistresses, and returned to the kitchen.
“I knew somebody would be foolin’ of ’em,” she assured herself angrily,
but she had to laugh. Their dear, kind faces were wrinkled and pale, and
the great frizzes had lost their pretty curliness, and were hanging
down, almost straight and very ugly, into the ladies’ eyes. They could
not tuck them up under their caps, as they were sure might be done.
Then came a succession of rainy days, and nobody visited the rejuvenated
household. The frisettes looked very bright chestnut by the light of
day, and it must be confessed that Miss Dobin took the scissors and
shortened Miss Lucinda’s half an inch, and Miss Lucinda returned the
compliment quite secretly, because each thought her sister’s forehead
lower than her own. Their dear gray eyebrows were honestly displayed, as
if it were the fashion not to have them match with wigs. Hetty at last
spoke out, and begged her mistresses, as they sat at breakfast, to let
her take the frizzes back and change them. Her sister’s daughter worked
in that very shop, and though in the workroom, would be able to oblige
them, Hetty was sure.
But the ladies looked at each other in pleased assurance, and then
turned together to look at Hetty, who stood already a little
apprehensive near the table, where she had just put down a plateful of
smoking drop-cakes. The good creature really began to look old.
“They are worn very much in town,” said Miss Dobin. “We think it was
quite fortunate that the fashion came in just as our hair was growing a
trifle thin. I dare say we may choose those that are a shade duller in
color when these are a little past. Oh, we shall not want tea this
evening, you remember, Hetty. I am glad there is likely to be such a
good night for the sewing circle.” And Miss Dobin and Miss Lucinda
nodded and smiled.
“Oh, my sakes alive!” the troubled handmaiden groaned. “Going to the
circle, be they, to be snickered at! Well, the Dobbin girls they was
born, and the Dobbin girls they will remain till they die; but if they
ain’t innocent Christian babes to those that knows ’em well, mark me
down for an idjit myself! They believe them front-pieces has set the
clock back forty year or more, but if they’re pleased to think so, let
’em!”
Away paced the Dulham ladies, late in the afternoon, to grace the parish
occasion, and face the amused scrutiny of their neighbors. “I think we
owe it to society to observe the fashions of the day,” said Miss
Lucinda. “A lady cannot afford to be unattractive. I feel now as if we
were prepared for anything!”